BACK STAGE WEST
August 21, 2003
The curse of
opening night--that's the only way to explain why the critics from the Los
Angeles Times and LA
Weekly, as well as two
other critics I spoke to, were unimpressed with Alina Phelan's performance in
the lead of Hamlet: the first quarto at Theatre of NOTE. They saw it on a faltering Friday,
apparently, because the next night, the Saturday gala opening, I and my critic
Madeleine Shaner witnessed something special: a Hamlet of fire and humor,
immediacy and vitality, a brilliant melancholic whose "antic
disposition" hit that magical middle ground between sincerely
grief-stricken distraction and devilishly playful put-on foolery.
Phelan, who was
educated at Cal Arts and regularly performs improv comedy with Those Meddling
Kids, last appeared at NOTE as an infantilized abuse victim who believed she
was the Icelandic pop diva Bjork, in Erik Patterson's Yellow Flesh/Alabaster
Rose; she has an alert,
expressive emotional fluency and a clarity of physical gesture any actor would
envy. As Hamlet--in this fascinatingly sliced-and-diced early bootleg of
Shakespeare's greatest, toughest play--Phelan doesn't try to make us forget she's
a woman (and a very sweet, sanguine, gentle woman at that), but she does make
her cross-gender casting feed the play's confused, cross-purposed pathos in
some mysterious, alchemical way. Director Andrew Borba had the exceptional
vision to see what she could bring to the role, and Phelan, a fan of the play
from way back, stepped up to the plate and hit this curve ball out of the park.
Indeed, on a
second viewing two weeks after opening, I saw an actor who had hit her stride
and was riding the play with the kind of intense but relaxed bravura one
associates with master Shakespearean showmen like Branagh or Olivier. Really,
the performance is that good, that invigorating--and it's surrounded and
supported by one of the strongest, supplest ensembles in my long memory of NOTE
productions. So disregard those poor early notices, or you'll miss one of the
most exhilarating, inspiring, joy-inducing acting feats on L.A. stages in a
long, out-of-joint time.
--Rob Kendt
"Hamlet: the first quarto" continues at Theatre of NOTE, 1517 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m. Through Sept. 6. $15. (323) 856-8611.